An Age of Secrets To Be Revealed In “NIBIRU”

by Louis Bedigian

“What is behind the whole story outside the boarders of our world is the imagination of the player.” 

Things aren’t what they seem in NIBIRU: Age of Secrets, a new game from the makers of Black Mirror. The story follows a man who comes across a mysterious World War II tunnel. This tunnel was hidden for generations but was [accidentally?] unearthed when construction workers began building a new highway. As leading character Martin Holan, it’s your job to find your way inside the tunnel. Doing so, however, could have severe consequences. 

“The Germans launched several projects before and during the war that should have helped them in their efforts,” said Zdeněk Houb, leading musician and co-writer of NIBIRU.  “Many of them, however, had nothing to do with classical scientific work and development of new technologies and materials. A tunnel discovered by chance in western Bohemia was used at the end of the world by retreating German troops as a secret archive in which they collected several things and among other things also the secret project NIBIRU.

“The Germans maybe even believed that they would be able to reach the shelter after the end of the war and use the things collected in there. As we can see from our story, it took them a littler more at the end…”

That’s quite a premise, but as always I needed to know more. Who is Martin Holan and why is he exploring the tunnel in the first place? Are there any other important characters? And what about the gameplay – how has it been implemented?

It is my understanding that the game was once called NIBIRU: Messenger of the Gods and Age of Secrets.  Why the change?  Also, do these subtitles give important hints to the story's many secrets?

Zdeněk Houb: The name NIBIRU: Messenger of The Gods is inspired by the existence of a hypothetical twelfth planet of the solar system, from which according to ancient myths the “Gods from the Stars” should have come to the Earth. This name was used for distribution of the game in the Czech Republic and in other countries. Age of Secrets is another “subtitle.”

How do you go about writing a script for an interactive adventure, as opposed to something non-interactive like a movie or a novel?
 

ZH: NIBIRU is a remake of our first game, the Messenger of Gods. The story is a work of three people in our team and we modified it for NIBIRU so that it is more interesting and entertaining than in our original game. It is a difficult task to answer the question; how to write such story, but the writing is somewhat similar to building a scenario for a movie or for a book.

Part of the game appears to take place in a large, beautiful mansion.  How does that fit in, and what other locations will we be exploring?

ZH: Professor Vilde is living in the mansion you are talking about and Martin meets him there to deliver important information to him. We can also see the mansion in the game intro where Martin learns first hints of the story and from where he soon moves to Prague. Besides the capital of the Czech Republic, the player will also visit western Bohemia, France, but also more exotic places and at the end also the ancient Maya pyramids. 

Who is Martin Holan and why does he become the hero of the game?  Why does he visit the World War II tunnel in the first place?

 

ZH: Martin is a student studying French with significant support of his uncle who lives in France. Martin studies archaeology and linguistics, so he is exactly the type of character we needed for the story of NIBIRU. His uncle has broad investigating interests and he asks Martin to check seemingly unimportant information the Professor heard in the media. A banal finding slowly becomes something much bigger.

Are there any other key characters we'll encounter?  If so, who?
 

ZH: The above-mentioned Professor Vilde, the scientist Dietrich Raumhart and his son are among the other characters. All the three influence the plot of the game in some way. But we do not want to reveal how.

Is NIBIRU somewhat of a survival game?

ZH: NIBIRU does not include action elements and it is a classical adventure.

This being a story-driven adventure, how will the gameplay match what's going on without being a distraction?

ZH: It is always very difficult to coordinate everything into one harmonic unit. The players will evaluate whether we succeeded in that or not. 

Can you choose your own path, or decide what Martin will say, creating a unique experience for multiple play-throughs?  Are there multiple endings to be seen?  (It's fine if you can't answer this one, we just like to provide our readers with as much detail as possible.)
 

ZH: The story of NIBIRU was combined since the very beginning as a “film” story, i.e. as a linear one. Of course, there can be many ends of NIBIRU, but we did not want to deprive the players of their fantasies about what is in fact behind the whole story, whether the mythical visitors from the space really exist etc. The player will learn only what happened here on the Earth. But what is behind the whole story outside the boarders of our world is the imagination of the player.

When you mouse over something: are sound clues given as well as the visual cues that indicate it's an object that should be examined?

ZH: Yes, all active objects will – when you mouse over them – warn the player visually that they can be examined or used.

NIBIRU's pre-rendered backgrounds are gorgeous.  Roughly how long does it take to design and render each background? 
 

ZH: This cannot be answered in one general answer, because each scene is different in terms of how it is complicated, but it is approximately two weeks.

The best part of any adventure game is the puzzles.  Could you provide us with some examples of what NIBIRU's puzzles will be like?
 

ZH: In this area we kept the style of Black Mirror, i.e. the further the player gets in the game, the more difficult the puzzles are. We found from players’ reactions that this style of growing difficulties was quite popular among them. I can mention a combined mechanical lock with four direction locks as one of the easier ones or a Maya puzzle where you have to count with Maya numbers as one of the more difficult ones. These are represented by ancient symbols you have to transfer in line with the Maya numerical system to a specific era that you will then set by the symbols at the altar. But you don’t have to look for the Maya numerical system because it is showed in the game.

Thank you for your time.